


Truth of Addiction

by cadkitten



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Depression, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Loss, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 19:18:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8502238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadkitten/pseuds/cadkitten
Summary: Drugs are a double-edged sword: sometimes they draw you in and hold you close, reminiscent of days long past, of better times and better places, and sometimes they lure you to the very cliffs of your demise and do their best to summon you over. Every day, every puncture of the needle is another chance, one more dance with the devil on this fragile precipice of choice. Salvation or devastation: which will it be today?





	

**Author's Note:**

> For JayRoyWeek on Tumblr. Day 6: Addiction  
> I read this study from a presenter who spoke in Sydney last month and it was just sort of this astounding view on addiction. It's not what we think, not at all what we've been taught. So much in our lives tells us to blame the person with the addiction. Our drug PSAs tell us to beware the person selling, to beware the addicts. Society tells us to avoid those with addiction, to not "be like them", and basically all-around makes us believe they're bad people for being addicted to things. But this study and many others like it shows us that addiction is _usually_ a product of the environment, not of the person simply having an "addictive personality" or even any chemical bonding between person and drug of choice.   
>  We all know about the study of a rat put into a cage alone, one water bottle laced with heroin, the other normal water, and the rat goes back repeatedly to the one laced with heroin until it kills itself. This is the chief study used to show us how horrible addiction is, to show us how _easy_ it is. Provided the drug, the rat ODs and dies. _But_ what we don't know is this:  
>  When a group of rats put into a happy habitat, full of things to do and other rats to socialize with, are provided the same options - one bottle laced with heroin, one with normal water - they will all inevitably go for the regular water. They will all try the heroin laced one simply because they don't know what it is and some will go back once or twice more, but none of them did it more than that, none of them killed themselves from it.  
> Even _more_ interestingly, they took a rat who was segregated in his own cage, addicted to the heroine-water, and placed him into the happy rat environment with his rat friends, and he went back to drinking the regular water. He didn't kill himself with the drug like all the others had.   
>  Addiction is very much a product of an environment, of a state of mind when you're in that environment. Remove that and you remove the desire in most cases.   
> If drugs were as addicting as they'd have us believe, every person who's ever been given short-to-long-term medical grade drugs for pain would also be addicted and looking up their nearest smack dealer for a fix. But in most cases, that's not what happens either. So... this horribly long author's note has been your friendly neighborhood PSA on drugs - the right kind of PSA. Now, onward to what you all came here for. ♥  
> Beta Readers: kate1zena  
> Song[s]: "7 Long Years" by Thieves & Liars

The air was thick with the steady undertone of a jazzy bass line, the wail of a sullen voice telling the stories of a million people, a hundred places where the tides were low and the heat was heavy. Something twitched inside of Roy, an old dull ache, a longing for something he'd never been afforded. Tipping his head back, he let it rest against the cracked red vinyl of the bench he was settled upon. Around him, the smoke was thick, the crowd easing their pain and fear with long pulls of tobacco and glasses of amber gold. Summer heat pulled at his clothes, stretched the white tank top over his well-chiseled body, should have shown him off instead of making him unapproachable. Perhaps it was his tattoos or maybe it was the emptiness in his eyes, the vacant stare of a man who'd lost his world and his way.

Whatever it was, this place was only serving to further his pain, only drawing him closer and closer to the comfort of an old friend that he'd long since denied. Slipping forward, he braced his forearms on the edge of the table, toyed with the glass of Highball he'd gotten halfway through. The lemon shifted further and further down into the glass as he moved it from side to side, sinking just like the way he felt. He supposed that would have been considered dramatic, the progression of his thoughts pathetically trite. But nothing made much sense when he hit this sort of low; never had and never would.

The steady pluck of an electric guitar, every note singular and gently tugging filled up the venue and he hunched forward even more, hiding himself away in the shadows of his slowly-slipping hair, half of it freed from his haphazardly placed hair tie. The burning desire increased as the drums smoothly ramped up the beat and he found himself nearly panting for his breath, his eyes closed against the harsh reality of what he knew he was about to do.

A tremble laced through him and he plucked the glass from the table, downing the rest of the contents in one go, sliding free of the booth as the guitar solo kicked in, the beat skittering and desperate. He could relate more than he wanted to. Shakily, he reached up and tucked some hair behind his ear, weaved his way between tables until he found a single man settled in a booth in the darkest corner: a man he had known in another life, in another time of listless hopelessness that had left him empty and seeking. 

Easing himself into the booth across from the man, he settled into the darkness of the corner, stretched his hand under the table, palming the man a fifty and keeping his hand outstretched until a small packet was placed into his hand. He slipped it into his pocket and remained seated, carefully avoiding looking at his dealer, not at all prepared to face the smug, knowing look he was sure would be on his face. He let the music lull him to a degree, just having the drug in his pocket leaving him slightly calmer in the face of what he was about to do. It shouldn't have, should have left him full of panic.

Picking himself up from the seat, he meandered through the club, settled at the bar and ordered another Highball, waited on the girl to serve it up to him and then slipped her a twenty on top of a red coaster. The money disappeared and she passed him his drink, a key under the glass. He palmed it and walked away from the bar, moving down the hallway indicating restrooms. Unlocking the employees only supply closet, he closed the door behind him, clicked on the single bare light bulb, and settled himself down on top of a stack of boxes. 

Fishing the baggy and a lighter from his pocket, he placed his glass down and emptied out the contents of the baggy. Placing the foil onto the little wire holder on the shelf in front of him, he attached his tiny length of tubing to the rig. His heart pounded in his chest and his breathing increased as he stared down at what he was about to do. Seven years spent away from this life, seven long years where he hadn't even given it a thought. All it took was his daughter being ripped away from him, Jade leaving him to chase her life without him, and here he was again, as if he were visiting an old friend in the back of this storage room.

He'd managed months between them leaving and this moment, but the instant he'd added the dissolution of his team to the mix, he'd fallen right back into the same old pit of aching loneliness and self-hatred.

Thoughts of how Lian would look at him if she knew her father was an addict whispered through his head, brought his heart to thudding heavy against his ribs. When he closed his eyes, he could see the pain of disapproval on Jason's face and it left him cold inside. But when he opened his eyes, reality was no better - no one there to disapprove and no one there to hold him just long enough to make it all go away. His insides churned and he took in a hitching breath as he picked up the smaller baggy, dumping the contents onto the aluminum foil. Picking up his lighter, he hunched over the rig and brought the lighter up under the foil, fingers locked hard around fading tropical scene printed on the plastic. His thumb moved to the wheel and he hesitated there, tears forming in the corners of his eyes, threatening to spill over. Reality was hell, but this place was just as much of one - the time shorter and the barest moments of euphoria easier to catch, but the repercussions worse, the loathing hatred in his gut raw here.

Sitting back, he tucked his lighter back into his pocket and pulled his phone free instead. A single message waited for him, like a beacon of hope in these stormy waters, and he clicked it, praying salvation would be within it.

_Haven't heard from you in a while, you doin' okay?_

Jason... sweet, anything but innocent Jason. He huffed out a little breath and thumbed out his reply, two simple letters, a plea for help.

_No._

His phone lit up less than a minute later, an incoming call and he answered it, pressing it to his ear as he breathed out a quiet, "Jaybird..."

Jason's voice was smooth across the line, carefully pitched and Roy knew he was keeping anything like emotion from the words as a precaution. Sometimes he thought he learned far too much from Batman. "Tell me where you are and I'll be there if you want me to be." 

A simple enough string of words, all of them threaded together leaving Roy's breath stuck in his throat as the tears overflowed down his cheeks. Swiping them away, he turned on the boxes and leaned back against the wall, tipping his head back and staring up at the water spots on the ceiling. "Nowhere you want me to be..."

"Just tell me where. Please." This time a whisper of anguish painted the words, something Roy hadn't expected. He'd expected anger, anticipated frustration at his weakness, but he'd never expected such torment to spill from Jason's lips.

"Lonny's." He let it hang in the air, _knew_ that Jason knew what that meant. He'd told him once when they'd raided the place in their alternate lives that he knew it far too intimately. It hadn't been outright, but the implication was clearer than daylight. 

"Give me ten, okay?" Rustling and then a quiet, "Do you want to stay on the line?"

Roy tipped his head back further, took in a shaking breath, _intended_ to say something - anything - but nothing came out. He could hear the click of the line that meant Jason had switched to his headset and he heard the bike roar to life. They were silent for a while before Jason finally broke it, a single broken little phrase, "Did you...?"

Roy swallowed hard, squeezing his eyes closed. "Not yet." It wasn't a promise not to and it wasn't as hopeless as if he'd said he had, but he knew it wasn't necessarily the phrase Jason wanted to hear from him. It simply _existed_ on the air between them for the time being. 

He heard the bike's engine cut a few minutes later and he pulled himself up, moved to the door and held his hand against the lock, waiting to twist it until Jason was there. It was inherent, he just knew that he'd understand the vacant look he'd given that room when they'd taken the place down, know what it meant. The _want_ for the heroin was fading, the desperate drive that had sent him scrambling for it easing as he heard the music of the club come over the line.

The steady clamor of the venue fell into the background and the line clicked off a second before there was a light tap on the door. Roy unlatched it and stepped back into the room, letting Jason in with him. 

Jason closed the door, latching it back, and turned around to face him. Roy wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but being pulled into Jason's arms, enveloped in the warmth of his embrace and the gentle spice of his scent wasn't it. Melting against him, he closed his eyes and buried his face against Jason's shoulder, doing his best to keep it together as he stood there in his arms. 

There weren't questions, no interrogation of _why_ he'd done this, of how he'd ended up here. Jason didn't ask a single thing of him now that he was here. There weren't threats of walking away from him if he touched the stuff again and there wasn't even a single hint of malice in Jason's entire demeanor over what Roy _had_ done. There was only warmth and comfort in his arms, tenderness in the way he rubbed his hand over the small of Roy's back - only the ease of the clamoring wreck that was his mind as he clung to the last solid wall of his life that he'd thought had been ripped away from him less than an hour earlier.

Jason's hand slipped along his jaw, his knuckles coming to tilt his head up so that they looked into one another's eyes. His palm came to rest against Roy's cheek, leaving Roy's eyes half-lidded and an entirely different sort of pounding in his heart, another kind of longing in his soul.

"You know... all I ever wanted to hear was that you needed me." It was so typical, so very _Jason_ to leave it at that, to leave this raw half-confession open-ended and trembling on the air between them. 

Roy could see the ache in his eyes, felt like it was the reflection of his very own as he gazed into it. The darkness inside of Jason was there for him to see, an abyss of love and loss, of anger and violence, of unspoken pleas and an anguish Roy was only starting to understand. He'd wondered for years how Jason had never fallen into this blackness, how he'd avoided every accurate cliché of loss and mental illness going hand in hand with addiction. Now that he stood here, locked in his arms, given the opportunity to just _exist_ in a space with him, he understood. 

They were both a product of their environments: nothing less, nothing more. Jason had chased his anger in the way his life had spawned for him. His mother the addict and Jason the survivor. Jason the kid taken in off the streets and shown what a little affection could do, what someone caring enough to lift someone up could _change_. Even with the pain of his death tearing him apart, Jason hadn't turned to drugs for the help he needed. He'd walked a path built to gain the attention of the one he needed to see him the most, thrown everything to the wind in what he'd seen then as an attempt at revenge, but had really just been the world's largest scream for help. Every hand Jason had in his life had extended to him, offered to pull him up off the floor when he'd fallen. 

And Roy? He was equally a product of his own hell. Loss, abandonment, a world full of people who walked out on him with little to no warning, turning him away without explanation and turning their backs on him when he needed them the most. A life caught somewhere between the streets he'd grown up on and the dirty underbelly of high society. He'd seen no charm, no brilliant light of hope... not until now.

Wrapping his arms tighter around Jason, he rested his cheek against his shoulder and closed his eyes, allowing himself to voice what he'd have once thought of as a pathetic plea. "Please don't leave me."

Jason's breath hitched, his hand sliding up Roy's back and coming up into his hair, gently tilting his head back as he whispered, "Forgive me." It wasn't just for leaving, it wasn't just for what Roy _knew_ he was about to do. It was for a lifetime of sins, it was Jason's way of asking Roy to help him chase his pain away in the same breath he hoped to scare Roy's away.

Their lips met and Roy brought his hand to rest on Jason's shoulder, fingertips curving over the prominent muscle as he kissed him back.

There were things fate decided were meant to happen: places a person was supposed to be, horrible things people had to endure in order to have faith in the better pieces of the world, and golden moments - like this - that were provided as a balm warding against the rest. Even if it was only a moment, even if it wouldn't last, Roy knew he'd never find regret in whatever this was that was about to happen... and he knew, more than anything, that he _needed_ it to.


End file.
